drk5036
Contributor
Right! That’s why I’m surprised more people aren’t pleading with the OP to not purposefully overweight herself to satisfy some arbitrary “must have ditchable weight” rule by her LDS.Carry only the weight you will need to be neutral. If I'm carrying 5 extra pounds of weight, At 99 ft, I'll have to have 138.4 cubic inches of air in my BC to be neutral... that that's air that four times as dense as air on the surface. If I don't vent on the way up that buoyancy will expand to give me almost 370 cubic inches or 14 pounds of lift at my 15ft safety stop and a whopping 554 cubic inches or 20 pounds at the surface. Talk about complicating your dive. Get rid of as much weight as you can and still keep a safety stop and watch your SAC improve.
(As an aside, this is also why I don’t support the “you have to buy from your LDS!!!” mentality. There’s too many people out their posing as divers even as instructors that have no idea what they are doing, and are teaching poorly)